So lets talk about player retention in this mod...

[Dorito]

I try to take new players aside and teach them the basics. Done this with 3 or 4 new players and I think I helped them, but once, a new player asked something, and I gave him the answer, but 3 or 4 other people just started yelling at him some troll answer and he assumed it must be right. This community is EXTREMELY toxic. I don't think anything can really be done about this though, it's just the way it is.

Well, a lot of people in general suck. Some people IRL are only nice because of social norms, and even then that's debatable. So once you go into the land of anonymous online, social norms almost pretty much go out the window and people's true selves are brought to light.

And, honestly, most online communities have their fair share of cancer. Although, I will admit MB2 does tend to top the leaderboards in that department.

 

[Dorito]

havent read much of this thread but i just want to say that I think there are two main improvements that could be done to keep players:

1) Guides, information about the mod etc: Make it really obvious on the launcher with clickbait links like 'LEARN TO DUEL HERE!!' and 'LEARN TO PLAY OPEN HERE!!!!'
2) Ease of access: Make the default .cfg include /rate 25000, cl_maxpackets 100, snaps 40, binds for class special 1 & 2. Maybe one of those images like this

for loading screens.

oh also make sabering a bit simpler (no acm etc) but thats a whole different thread

This. But, my God, that looks like it was made by an amateur on Paint 3D.

 

[FlawedOpinion]

As a newer player, I feel like I should put in some low-level insight on the situation.

I've been playing for roughly a few weeks, albeit sporadically, and I've seen a lot of the negative aspects of the game. Mostly from my time in duel, but I've seen a TKer or two in Open as well. It does make it quite difficult to learn, and the average response from people (outside of the forums, y'all are helpful AF) is to 'practice with people your level', which is accurate, but difficult to achieve, in my personal experience.

I've never been a developer, or run anything larger than a guild on WoW, but I've one suggestion from what we used to do for new players back then: Run Newb events. Perhaps post it up on the launcher, or some other way to make it public, and have a server or two set up for x amount of hours where new players can go to receive tutelage from experienced players, and spar with one another for practice. Obviously it would have to be monitored, as I could see it being a massive lame magnet (FREE NOOBS HERE), but I feel like it could be a good way to retain what new players trickle into MB2. Hell, I'd even go so far as to make a FB group (if you guys don't already have one) and post events there as well.

Once again, just the opinion of a flawed, newer player, who loves this mod (outside of maybe the acm thing, but that's a tale for another thread).

 

[Defiant]

That's good to hear. One of my biggest gripes with this game is that there's always some kind of join bug that happens at the beginning of new maps or when switching classes and the round ends or something. I'm sure stuff like this had people uninstalling before they even got to play. Not to mention class config and class binds having to be manually bound. There should be a way to automatically change key binds depending on the class you're playing. Obviously, you won't need Q, E & F as a gunner because they don't use force powers, and there's only so many intuitive keybind combinations, so controls can get clunky when you're trying to do Sudoku with your keyboard buttons.

There is a default keymap in the PK3s, but, it doesn't actually seem to work. The updated launcher should let us address this by supplying an actual config file if one does not already exist (i.e. give a config to new players without overwriting existing player's configs). Join bugs need some attention, unfortunately because they are so sporadic they are hard to fix. The only predictable join bug I am aware of should be fixed in the next release.

I'm just sad that the game had all this momentum and sort of failed to capitalize. Many of the people that left probably won't come back. A 15 year-old Star Wars mod for a forgotten Star Wars game franchise is only going to attract a finite amount of people, so when a huge chunk of that potential market already gives up, that leaves even less potential new players. Hopefully the new Solo movie will bring back some people and then some, but something tells me there won't ever be a bigger influx of players than Christmas 2017.

The problem is that it's hard for us to be nimble. Mace, Vis and Spag did a wonderful job getting DOTF2 out to capitalise on the attention of the last film, but you have no idea how much effort was required behind the scenes. I was only chipping in fixing a few minor bugs or doing a little bit of research to help out at that point but the schedule we were on left me physically and mentally exhausted. People have real lives and real jobs. Part of it is on us to be better organised to take advantage of these things where we can, but even knowing I have 12 weeks and 1 day before the next movie comes out, I cant begin to tell you what will make it into updates for sure before then. If I were doing this full time, every join bug we had would be fixed in those 12 weeks. Some new players understand that they're probably not going to get as polished a product as they would be used to, or as we would like to deliver, but some do, and some like the quirks. All that being said, this is a really special time to be involved with MB2, let alone leading it. When I was doing this before there was no hope of new content of new movies, there were hardly any new games that would allow us to really expand. We've just had the third new star wars movie since just after the mod began, and we really caught a boost from it. We had the most simultaneous players since whenever jacklul's server lisin late January - long after Christmas with people back at work and school. There is momentum there, we just need to learn how to surf the wave a bit better.

'practice with people your level', which is accurate, but difficult to achieve, in my personal experience.

Welcome to the game, Honestly, I don't feel that it is necessary to divide the population like this. Don't get me wrong i'm sure it can help with someone's confidence to get a few kills under their belt, but one of the best things I think that can be done is to spectate the people who are playing well. See what they do, what tactics they use, what abilities they use in what situation and learn from it. Honestly, other than being given raw information and a safe place to practice I don't think there's a lot that can be directly taught. I think part of the responsibility is with the community to take new players such yourself and not make them feel stupid or bad for dieing a lot or dieing in a stupid way. I've been playing for about 13-14 years and I still die in stupid ways. Part of it is on us is make that information available and available in a way people want to consume. Libraries and Wikis are great for learning quantum physics, but they're not much fun when you just want to blast something.

 

[Dorito]

R U Unamused?

Yes.

 

[Aizencin]

oh also make sabering a bit simpler (no acm etc) but thats a whole different thread

Sabering is already simple

 

[noel]

Sabering is already simple

im not taking the bait - I and a lot of other people in the community (stassin and sev included before u call me a newfag) share this opinion and it largely comes down to ACM, inconsistency of Pb and invisible perks in each style

pls though lets not make this into another thread about sabering if you want to know more about my ideal sabering world then i'll tell u on steam or something lol

 

[Eazy E]

pls though lets not make this into another thread about sabering if you want to know more about my i̶d̶e̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶a̶b̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶l̶d̶ pre 1.1 then i'll tell u on steam or something lol

FTFY

 

[Aizencin]

im not taking the bait - I and a lot of other people in the community (stassin and sev included before u call me a newfag) share this opinion and it largely comes down to ACM, inconsistency of Pb and invisible perks in each style

pls though lets not make this into another thread about sabering if you want to know more about my ideal sabering world then i'll tell u on steam or something lol

I wont talk about sabering, and i dont care what peple cares, this build has a skill gap, a build with a skill gap cant get simpler

 

[Eazy E]

I wont talk about sabering, and i dont care what peple cares, this build has a skill gap, a build with a skill gap cant get simpler

nearly all builds have had skill gaps (aside from maybe 1.1 and 1.2).

 

[Aizencin]

nearly all builds have had skill gaps (aside from maybe 1.1 and 1.2).

Yeah, but you used to get the skill gap with mechanics that actually took skill, unlike this parry spam fest

 

[Lervish]

I'd like to know what the average 10-15 years retention % of a digital game is. For MB2 it's probably remarkably high, can confirm in 2030.

On a more serious note, OP is very much on the right track.

 

[FRANK LAMPART]

Well, we had a huge influx of players back in 2015 when TFA came out. Also, I think JKA went on humble bundle at the same time. So yeah, a lot of new people, but as a rough guess, probably only a handful kept playing after a few months.

I think a lot of these people expected it to be like battlefront. As in, if you pick Jedi, you are just going to wreck everything and everyone. A lot of the new players pick a saber class and end up getting ruined 0/30. I think they judged the game's balancing dynamics too early without understanding it and just quit the game altogether. "I'm a jedi why is this stormtrooper killing me?!??" That kind of stuff.

Also, as many people have pointed out, there are so many hidden mechanics in this game that people simply will not find out unless somebody tells them. They could sift through pages of patch notes on the forums, but who wants to do that? There needs to be more information in-game about abilities, perks and hidden mechanics.

An in-game tutorial would be great. Probably would be a nightmare to develop though.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

An in-game tutorial would be great. Probably would be a nightmare to develop though.

Planning is arguably the hardest part of that.

 

[noel]

I wont talk about sabering, and i dont care what peple cares, this build has a skill gap, a build with a skill gap cant get simpler

what do you mean by a skill gap?

as in some people are way better than others? if so, i don't think thats true. And even if it is true, it's not something you can ever avoid. Some people have played this game for 2 weeks, some a year, some 10+ years.

Also how does a skill gap prove that the build is simple?

 

[MaceMadunusus]

if so, i don't think thats true

Achilles destroys me every time I have to saber him during a test session (generally not testing new stuff when I have to be saberist). I suck at dueling and the times I do win I can't explain how I won. So yeah a skill gap exists.

 

[noel]

Achilles destroys me every time I have to saber him during a test session (generally not testing new stuff when I have to be saberist). I suck at dueling and the times I do win I can't explain how I won. So yeah a skill gap exists.

Well maybe it's because like you said you 'suck at dueling', I can tell why I get beaten by the likes of Shilling or House.

I'm not trying to pull a 'IM GOOD SO I KNOW BETTER' or anything because 1) im not that good 2) im not a dev or anything. I'm just saying that with getting better at dueling comes the ability to understand the system more, making it more obvious why you're losing to X person and why you can beat Y person (largely comes down to movement, their reactions compared to urs/the amount they pb, their attack and unpredictability etc.)

The likelihood is that you beat him without explaining how you win because its just chance, you might get a bunch of pb counters in a row without realising it or something idk.

I'm not saying this patch is perfect but it isn't intuitive, and with your logic, intuition should cause people to understand sabering better, not worse, and thus they would be able to realise why they get beaten by X person or how they beat Y person.

 

[President Bossk]

I don't get what the problem is with ACM. Can anyone explain why everyone hates it?

 

[Tempest]

I don't get what the problem is with ACM. Can anyone explain why everyone hates it?

Currently, most of the damage you'll ever get (without including randomly hitting someone right as they let go of block, which is where the actual majority of baseline damage comes from) is after accruing probably +3-5 ACM (depends on what style you're using and which one you're hitting). The issue is, it takes time to build that up, which in combination with wet noodle damage on everything in general (and basically anything prior to getting ACM), means artificially long duels (again, assuming you don't just hit someone a bunch when they aren't holding block or anything like that). This is even worse in open mode where you are "supposed" to be building ACM up on multiple people (so you're doing low damage to everyone by default and it takes a long time to deal with one, let alone multiple, saberist(s)).

It's also an arbitrary damage build-up (so it doesn't really represent momentum that well as it's intended to). If it was able to naturally decrease and/or cancel out with your opponent's ACM (which I have included in current beta saber stuff), it would be a better representation.

Lastly, it's not a very clear system in regards to how you build/take it (also the way it's built/taken encourages mashing swings together and trying to get the last hit in). Trying to explain the differences between chains/combos to people always leaves a sour taste in my mouth because it's just...dumb, in most cases.

 

[Aizencin]

what do you mean by a skill gap?

as in some people are way better than others? if so, i don't think thats true. And even if it is true, it's not something you can ever avoid. Some people have played this game for 2 weeks, some a year, some 10+ years.

Also how does a skill gap prove that the build is simple?

skill cap* sorry for my england, I meant that everyone plays the same once they master parries, because there isnt a better way (or not as effective/worth) to defend, which means that you reach a skill cap, because if you master parries, there isnt any way you can improve in them, unlike MB, Pb and timing, which you could always improve it, no matter how skilled you were, which also encouraged people to develop their own playstyles rather than current build where most of the people(for 1000th time said) plays the same